My fellow members, I have a question to ask you. Why is it that when I teach a course called Abstract Drawing my class is full to bursting, waiting list and all, but when I teach Figure Drawing or Drawing for Beginners there is often space in the class room to spare? Common to all these courses is the word drawing, so it must be that the words figure or beginners are somehow alienating. But abstract is OK?
A few years back I used to live in ANOTHER Arabian country- not telling which one- where the director of the local Fine Art Society told all the artists, who wished to submit work for their very high profile annual exhibition, that their work should all be abstract. No landscapes of sea or mountain, no pictures of forts, tents or camels, unless they were the abstracted spirit, not an attempt at reality. He knew, you see, that the television cameras would catch the uncertainty in those realistic pictures and the opening nights Excellencies would understand that their countrys best artists were not as fine as they might be. But on abstract ground all was safe, because almost no one understands enough about abstract art to know when its no good! The pictures would be colourful, big, artyand eye-catching, and everyone could be proud. True!
Now, maybe, we all feel a little less comfortable about the term Abstract But drawing is hard, we all know that. Sometimes it can even make you feel physically tense and irritable, and after a little while it is apt to be just plain boring. Anyway, drawing is a gift that few of us are fortunate to receive. These days there are a thousand forms of creative expression that do not require the discipline of drawing accurately. We have cameras after all. So, no worries .. But if I called my classes Seeing for Beginners or Figure Seeing, how would you feel about them then? What if I said its not about drawing, but all about looking, and training your eyes: training your mind to use your eyes? Neither is it about reproducing what you are looking at accurately, though that is a fortunate side-effect.
We are dealing with the discipline of seeing everything that is really, REALLY there. Perceiving. And when you can do that you can carry it forward into whatever kind of creative pursuit you most enjoy, from interior design to pottery, to understanding the great works on the gallery walls. Even your abstractions will be better based; your hand, your eye, your mind is better connected, finer tuned.
There is, I think, one more thing that frightens people about my seeing classes. It has nothing to do with me, but all to do with that awful art teacher we all had when we were children, or perhaps that awful relative, who asked what it was when we showed them our drawing, then laughed that it didnt look like that to them.
There was the day we had an art lesson and the teacher SAID how to do it. Metaphorically, she told us to get on the bicycle, hold the handle bars, balance, turn the peddles and cycle away. Metaphorically, we fell off. People who have fallen off a number of times since are quite sensibly, disinclined to try again. Almost all of us did learn to ride a real bicycle. Someone held it up for us while we figured out how to balance, then they let go at the right moment. All of us learned to read, and to write, to hold a pencil and make marks that other people could understand. The rest, drawing, is just practice, an open mind, open eyes and someone to hold the bicycle. So what do you think? Tell me on kwaandub@mailme.ae
